If you prefer to use bash over cmd, you can set up a bash tab in Console2 by going to Edit > Settings > Tabs, clicking the Add button, and setting the shell option to the location of your bash executable followed by the -l parameter (or –login). You can set the title to whatever you like, change the background color, etc.

Now, if you added the Console2 context menu entries that I described in my previous post, you might also like to change into the current directory when you invoke it from the context menu. Depending on what version of bash you have, you might need to put the following at the end of your .bashrc file in your home directory:

I found that this step was not necessary if I used the version of bash that comes with Git (located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\bash.exe on my system). However, it was necessary if I used the version that comes with cygwin (C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe). Using the latter, the home directory used by bash was actually located at C:\cygwin\home\dave. This will (obviously) be different on your system.

EDIT 4/14/2015: It appears that Console2 is currently dormant. One alternative I’ve found is ConsoleZ, which is a fork of Console2. You can find it here: https://github.com/cbucher/console.